Organizations strive to ensure secure and convenient user access to services or accounts. With the proliferation of identity theft and the growing emphasis on convenience, organizations are forced to find a balance between gathering enough identifying information and making the services or accounts accessible to users. Regulations and business rules may also govern how much or the types of identifying information the user must provide depending upon the nature of the activity that is requested.
Existing systems often sacrifice security for convenience or sacrifice convenience for security. For example, users may be required to provide a login, password, and answer a secret question simply to engage in a low risk activity (e.g., to view current interest rates). Thus, although the user may be engaging in a low-risk activity, the user may be required to provide an excessive amount of information thereby sacrificing convenience for security.
The drawings are not to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be expanded or reduced to help improve the understanding of the embodiments of the present technology. Similarly, some components and/or operations may be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block for the purposes of discussion of some of the embodiments of the present technology. Moreover, while the technology is amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the technology to the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the technology is intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the technology as defined by the appended claims.